Building for myself: simple tools, real use
How I created my own toolkit to stay private, save time, and actually enjoy the process
Engineer, Builder, Writer
I don’t usually trust online tools- but they’re just too convenient.
Whether it’s editing PDFs, converting files, or tweaking images, you name it.
So, to keep things private, I built a few simple ones myself.
Why toolou?
I needed a place to host these tools, so I've created toolou.com
Silly name, basic layout, pretty much vibe-coded with v0 and Copilot Edits.
My favourites so far: Word to markdown converter, JSON formatter, and LinkedIn date finder. Let’s take a look!
Word to markdown converter
I wanted to paste documents into LLMs. Some of them, including OpenAI thinking models, do not allow document upload.
I wanted a quick way to go from .docx to markdown, without uploading them into shady web tools.
So I just created a tool on my own!
JSON formatter
It’s as simple as they come, but easily my most-used tool.
Especially helpful when I’m already in the browser and for some reason don’t feel like opening a code editor.
It was also the first one I built, and the one that got this whole thing started.
LinkedIn date finder
Definitely the weirdest one.
I built it because I wanted to see when posts were actually published. Sometimes a post felt oddly outdated, but LinkedIn only shows “1y”- which can mean anything from 12 to 24 months.
I also wanted to get a sense of the best times to post.
I even made a chrome extension based on it!
This was a fun little project on it's own.
Summing up
Are any of these revolutionary? Not at all.
Did I have fun? Absolutely.
Building something just for myself was surprisingly satisfying. You should give it a try too!
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